This course is 45 contact hours only, including up to [12] hours of Group presentations. The time is sufficient, with a serious effort from the students in and outside of class, to develop the skills which will permit you to articulate an entrepreneurial idea into a viable business plan:
(1) Conceptualise and write a polished 5-8 pages Executive Summary of a Business Plan;
(2) Create and deliver a first class 20-minute presentation of that Business Plan;
(3) Write and deliver a 90-second “elevator pitch”
In this endeavour, students will form teams of 3 to 4 persons max. Except for a few individual assignments, the class will evolve around these teams to complete lots of presentations targeting at least two key projects:
§ Project 1: Your Start Up
§ Project 2: Entrepreneurs Insights
Project 1: Your Startup
Doing so, students will endorse the role of Entrepreneurs who seek to launch their start up. In this exercise they will learn how to form and work in teams in order to accomplish the following titanic tasks and importantly present them in front of an audience:
§ Articulate the idea in broad terms: What it is. Who is it for. Why should it sell. Where.
The objective is to assess the broad business potential of the idea by reviewing its ability to solve definite problems and/or answers to the needs of a sizeable market.
§ Plan the business: What’s the stage of the business. What’s the size of the market. What’s the competition like and the strategy to counter it. How much money is needed for a start. What’s the funding strategy. What are the risks and expected returns for investors. Who is running the business.
The objective is to write a summary of a business plan (5 to 8 pages). Writing the executive summary of that plan is of paramount importance.
§ 90 seconds to convince: The Elevator Pitch.
The objective is to master the art of talking about your start up idea without any support, within condensed 90 seconds to a key decision maker that you’ve just met at the entrance of the elevator. The goal is to raise an interest strong enough to be invited to a follow up meeting when time allows it.
§ Pitch the business to investors: What are the component of a thriving presentation. How to structure it for your idea. How to make a convincing pitch.
The objectives are to learn the most important aspect of the entrepreneur’s story: THE 20 MINUTES PITCH. In doing so, students will learn how to craft, write and deliver their pitch to an audience of potential investors. Your goal is to obtain funding for your business.
Project 2: Business Case
- Choose a famous (or unfamous) company
- Tell us about their success and failures
- Describe their learders’ attribute
Because this is an intense course, prior preparation for each session is critical. It is expected you will be spending, on average, 2 hours of preparation for every contact hour of class. This is less than typical (3 hours per contact hour) for a course in a world-class business school (e.g., Stanford, MIT Sloan, HKUST, and now IUGB!
NB: The class time may not be sufficient to learn how to write a comprehensive (e.g., 50-100 page) Business Plan, although for those of you who are interested, appropriate materials will be put on reference in the Library.
Prereq: BUS 1301 or BUSA 1101 and ECO 2301 or ECON 2105 and ECO 2302 or ECON 2106
+ Corporate finance + Valuation
